I’d like to invite you to sit with this question….

How is your relationship with food?

If you’ve ever felt trapped in a cycle of guilt or shame or frustration around what you eat or how much you eat – you’re not alone. With all the conflicting food advice, and pressures to look a certain way, eating has become smothered in all kinds of harmful emotions, that trigger off unhealthy eating habits, like binge eating.

That’s why today, on I Love Me the Podcast, I share a deeply personal chapter of my life – how I overcame binge eating and reclaimed my relationship with food. But more importantly, how I reclaimed my relationship with myself.

Yes today, we peel back the layers on why people have difficult relationships with food, so if this is you, you can stop relying on willpower and self-control… And instead, learn how to create a sustainable, loving connection with your body, and what you put in it!

 

Simple, inspiring lessons in self-love. Hi sweetpea, it’s Tamra here.

So… I have a confession to make…

I was a binge eater.

Having grown up a skinny girl who ate what she liked when she wanted, I was suddenly faced with rapid weight gain in my early 20s, if I so much as looked at food the wrong way.

Suddenly, food became the enemy.

An enemy, I couldn’t avoid.

Hence began a love hate relationship with food.

I remember stashing a family-size block of chocolate on the highest shelf in the kitchen, and hiding it behind boxes and jars, like it was some sort of guilty treasure.

I made it deliberately inconvenient – needing to push chairs around, shuffle things out of the way, just to get to it.

A barrier to my own cravings, or so I thought.

But night after night, there I was, scaling my self-made obstacle course to retrieve that block of chocolate.

One square turned into two, then a row, then a whole block – gone before I even realised it.

The strangest part though…

Was that by the time I hit the last few rows, I wasn’t even tasting it anymore.

The joy of eating had vanished, yet I still kept going, as if finishing it was some kind of compulsion I couldn’t stop.

Then feeling immense guilt that I’d just shoved my face full of chocolate, I’d take laxative teas to get the chocolate out of me.

Realising I could simply flush the food out, I started having these teas regularly.

Weekly.

Then every single time I’d binge eat – which was quite often by then – I’d take a laxative tea.

Even if there was no chocolate in the house, if I couldn’t be bothered walking to the nearest shop, I’d binge eat on cereal.

I’d have one bowl, then another, then another…

Then despite feeling like my stomach would explode if I had any more, I’d go back for one more serving, then one more, until I felt like I just wanted to run away from my body…

My whole digestive system become completely messed up and I found I couldn’t poop without my laxative tea.

The laxative teas became a crutch.

I took them more and more and before I knew it, I was what was considered ‘bulimic’.

Me? Bulimic?

Yes!

Purging food whether it be out the mouth or out one’s bottom, is forcing the body to do something it doesn’t want to do.

And when you treat the body in such an abusive way, of course the body stops working properly.

Yes.

Binge eating – putting more food in the body than it needs for its survival and nourishment – and forcing that food out before the body’s had a chance to process it… is ‘abuse’!

And so bulimia haunted me for much of my 20s – my weight yo-yoing up and down, me feeling guilty for what I ate ALL the time, working out extra hard at the gym, so the excess food wouldn’t deposit itself in places I’d rather it not…

I got to the point, where I dreaded going home to visit my family, because I knew my mum would cook up a storm, and if I didn’t indulge in ALL the offerings, she’d withdraw her love from me…

This was before I discovered one simple truth…

It wasn’t ‘food’ I was craving, it was LOVE!

When a person binge eats – in fact when a person does anything in excess – it’s because that person is craving something.

And that thing they’re craving is LOVE!

To feel all the juicy side-effects of what love has to offer; acceptance, connection, joy, a feeling of belonging, wholeness…

Yet love is not found in a never-ending bowl of chocolate ice cream or a decadent strawberry cheesecake.

Those things NEVER fill the gap.

You just keep needing MORE.

And MORE.

And then some MORE.

And still the gap remains.

You’re never satisfied.

It’s not a hunger for food you have, but a hunger for love.

A person who feels satisfied with their life – a person who feels full to the brim with love – has no inclination to binge eat.

They feel FULL….

Spiritually and emotionally.

Hence why we call it ‘emotional’ eating.

We turn to food to give us something it can’t possibly deliver us.

And so the cycle continues.

So the question you might be asking is:

How do you STOP the cycle?

How do you stop binge eating?

The very simple answer is:

By filling yourself up with LOVE!

By learning how to give yourself what you’re craving, so you no longer look for it in the wrong places.

Such as through food.

Or relationships.

Or shopping…

Or whatever unhealthy place you seek out love.

Now, you might be saying:

Ok Tamra, so I need to fill myself up with love.

How do I do that?

If you’ve been listening to this podcast for a while, you’ll have heard me share plenty of self-love practices and tools, all designed to help plug you back into the love within.

My favourite one is the Love Wrap, which you’ll find in Episode 3: Fill yourself up with love. Your go-to tool for self-love.

Give it a go, or try some of the other practices I share.

Start learning how to love yourself, one small practice at a time.

So we practise self-love.

All the while looking at the conditioning that has you thinking you’re not loveable.

One of the most common beliefs kids grow up with these days, is ‘I’m not loveable’.

And because they believe they’re not loveable, they seek out love in all sorts of different places.

Often through romantic relationships and even more often, through food.

Yet the truth is, that every single of one of us is loveable.

We may not believe that to be true right now.

That’s ok.

We simply start looking at all the barriers that keep us from being able to love ourself.

And in doing so.. we start to reconnect with the part of ourselves that KNOWS we are loveable.

That we are enough.

That we are perfect just the way we are.

When we can come into that kind of relationship with ourself, where we know our true worth and lovability…

…then we no longer binge eat.

And that was certainly the case for me.

Once I was able to love and accept myself, the binge eating stopped.

I no longer needed to try with all my might to not eat, through will power and self-control…

Instead, I just didn’t feel the need to overeat.

When I was physically full, I felt full, because there was no longer any emotional emptiness.

And my example isn’t an isolated case.

I’ve since helped, literally hundreds of people overcome their eating issues – whether it be emotional eating, binge eating, anorexia or bulimia, or whatever other label has been thrown at you.

And the way I’ve helped these people, is not through strict dietary protocols.

Or needing to record everything they eat…

But simply clearing the limiting beliefs, such as I’m not loveable and I’m not good enough – that are at the root cause of any eating disorder.

Once we cleared those beliefs, my clients were able to establish a new healthy relationship with food, like I did.

Where they were more aware of what they put in their body and in what quantities.

Not in an obsessive way, but in a natural way where they were simply listening to their bodies needs.

And honouring those needs.

Where binge eating is no longer part of their experience of life.

Now I mentioned clearing limiting beliefs.

If this is a term that is unfamiliar to you, have a listen to Episode 2: Programmed for Love, as I go into detail there, on how our beliefs – that are installed in us prior to the age of 7 – essentially dictate how we act and behave in life.

How they act like ‘programming’, that has us reaching for another serve of cake, before we consciously realise what we’re doing.

In breaking unhealthy eating patterns, it’s not so much about trying to ‘stop’ a behaviour.

For that rarely works.

But rather, about learning to love and accept yourself, listen to your body, and realise you are whole and complete just the way you are.

So… now you know the root cause of eating issues, if this is a problem area for you, your job is to start focusing on giving yourself the love you so deeply crave.

Start there.

Go back through the episodes and play with the practices I share, especially the Love Wrap.

Then next week I’ll share a beautiful practice in giving our physical body more love.

Because when a person has an eating issue, it almost always coincides with some amount of body dislike, or even body hate.

Unfortunately, most people these days are walking around with some amount of self-consciousness in relation to how they look.

So make sure you listen in next week.

In the meantime, when you feel the urge to binge eat, pause.

Ask yourself:

‘What do I really want? What do I really crave right now?’

What you’ll usually find, if you listen long enough, is that you want to feel love.

And perhaps that love will be in the form of a luxurious bath with candles, perhaps that love will be by way of transitioning to a more nourishing job where you feel valued and appreciated, perhaps that love will be about taking the time to truly get to know YOU and what’s needed for you to feel the love within.

What you need to understand, is this:

Food doesn’t fix the underlying issue of an eating disorder.

Like a pill, it masks it.

Until you go beneath the surface and look at the personal barriers keeping you from letting love into your life, then the binge eating will continue.

OR… you’ll adopt a different, unhealthy habit, like smoking or shopping… in a bid to fill the gap.

So move your focus to loving yourself.

And if you’d like my guidance and support in doing that, get in touch.

My One-on-One Intensive, where we re-align all the beliefs keeping you from loving yourself, is a deep dive into healing your life…. and your relationship with food.

I’ll pop a link in the show notes, so you can learn more about this program, if that feels like your next self-loving step.

Please know that having a healthy relationship with food – where food is your friend – is available to everyone, if they’re willing to look at their relationship with themself, and go on the beautiful journey of learning how to love themself.

Thanks for listening, and if you have a friend or know someone who could benefit from this episode, please send it their way.

And if you’re loving what I’m sharing on I Love Me the Podcast and want more resources to up your self-love, simply visit my online school Gettingnaked.com.au where I teach you how to strip off the layers of childhood conditioning, so you can fall in love with you.

Sign up for your FREE Self-Love Starter’s Kit there, and if you do enrol in any of my programs, know that a percentage of profits go to planting trees, so together we can re-robe Mother Earth.